The Human Chorus The Human Chorus The Human Chorus BY: WILLIAM WOOD
I finished the last sentence and gently closed the book. 12:30 am. In exactly six hours I
had to wake up to get ready for school. I should have been tired, but my mind was ablaze. My conscience screamed to sleep now, or I would suffer tomorrow in my classes. But its pleas were drowned out by the whirring of my mind. Never had I felt so convicted and connected to a fictional character. I reopened the book and turned to the last page of James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues.”
Sonny’s fingers filled the air with life, his life. But that life contained so many others. And
Sonny went all the way back, he really began with the spare, flat statement of the opening phrase of the song. Then he began to make it his… I heard what he had gone through, and would continue to go through until he came to rest in the earth. He had made it his:
I paused my reading and glanced toward the door where my brothers were sleeping.
James Baldwin had captured the brotherly dynamic so masterfully that I instantly connected with the story’s narrator, Sonny’s older brother. I understood his familial obligation for his brother ’s welfare. I understood the anger that he felt when Sonny ignored his advice. I understood the sadness and guilt when he saw Sonny was arrested for substance abuse. Baldwin’s story of two African American brothers living in Harlem in 1945 deeply resonated with me, a white teenager in 2018. But how? Everything about us seemed so different - our skin color, where we grew up, our socioeconomic backgrounds. How could I possibly relate to what the narrator felt toward his brother?
But what if those differences did not matter? Perhaps, our connection would make sense.
We both grew up with brothers that needed and demanded more attention from our parents. We both stayed focused and succeeded academically. We both have a younger brother that ignores our advice,
